Falling into Infinity
by ibuzoo
Summary: Immortality has always a price.


**o.**

_They're driving along a deserted highway while fields and trees rush past them and the sun reflects white on Tom's aviator sunglasses and he asks playfully, almost mischievous, "Where do you want to go?"_

_Her eyes are on fire, bright and caramel with freckles of sun-kissed bronze and when she answers her voice is clear and strong._

* * *

><p><strong>i.<strong>

Immortality has always a price.

* * *

><p><strong>ii.<strong>

It starts in a shady London back alley where the gutter reeks of piss and oil while the moon hides behind thick clouds so the night lays like a blanket over the city.

She puts the blade fifteen times between the boy's ribs and the blood soaks her hands and sleeves of her powder-rose cardigan but she can't stop because her heartbeat increases and the panic is written all over her face - she can still feel his bulky, podgy fingers on the inside of her thighs.

There's a rustle in the brambles behind her and she swirls around, knife painfully tight in her hand and when the man emerges from the shadows he looks down and kicks his Italian leather shoes against the ginger boy's head on the floor. When the man smiles it's cruel and perilous and predatory at once and when he reaches out his hand, the terror creeps in dark waves across her spine, like a long-legged spider.

_(she drops the knife and reaches for his hand nevertheless)_

* * *

><p><strong>iii.<strong>

Tom's soul is a rotten piece he cannot heal, doesn't want to heal because all he desires is control, is power, is magic. But the only magic that runs through his veins is the bitter juice of immortality, an ambrosia he swallowed centuries ago. He searched for someone like her for a long time and it feels almost like premeditated murder that she doesn't want to share his life.

_(all magic left are six crimson pomegranate seeds that rest luscious and fat in his palm and she laughs, declines, doesn't want to eat them)_

* * *

><p><strong>iv.<strong>

She pushes a silver teaspoon through the foamy surface on top of her cappuccino, breathes the dark scent of fresh ground beans when she takes a sip out of her turquoise cup before she pushes the little Italian biscuit into her mouth.

"You could be immortal, you know?", he murmurs over the rim of his espresso cup but she retorts amused, almost playful, "Now, why would I want that?"

A deep sigh leaves his lips that sounds to her like frustration and Tom's eyes wander through the room until they fix on someone with bright blond hair and cork earrings. They share a glance and his grey eyes glisten like the frozen atlantic sea with freckles of steel - perilous, hazardous, homicidal.

She takes another sip of her coffee and nods.

_(they kill the girl that night, fast and excruciating and Hermione watches the blood spreading between the coffee-stains on her sky-blue apron, knows that Tom needs this to be in control, to be in balance)_

_(she doesn't regret it)_

* * *

><p><strong>v.<strong>

He peels his heart like a pomegranate that night, offers his palms with red juicy seeds when he offers, bids, "Eat."

But she starts to laugh wide open, throws her head around with glistening eyes.

She declines, like all the other times before and Tom closes his palm with clenched teeth and the gut-wrenching feeling that Death can still take her away.

* * *

><p><strong>vi.<strong>

They visit Greece during the hottest summer ever and thick drops of sweat catch in the nape of Tom's dark navy polo shirt - they disappear behind the collar and she watches amazed how his throat moves when he drinks long gulps out of an Evian plastic bottle.

There's a tourist observing them from afar and Hermione feels his dark eyes on her petite frame and how they follow each of her steps with desire glistening behind his walls. Tom catches his gaze and she knows what this means, grabs the front of his shirt and tugs him down to kiss him soft and long on his fine curved lips.

_(they kill the man that night and Tom's hands are covered in a thick crimson blanket that soaks the creases and wrinkles of his skin, moisturises it to leave bloody fingerprints on Hermione's face when he grabs it to attack her lips)_

* * *

><p><strong>vii.<strong>

The concept of immortality does put certain things into perspective for him.

Things like the only other person in the world who will not age and wither away like the masses of pestilent rats and people around him, but who will live at his side without the fear that death will claw his bony fingers inside of them.

He offers his scarlet stained palms with six fat magical pomegranate seeds that offer immortality but she pushes them aside and kisses his mouth. It's frustrating that the horror he once held for death now starts to wrench his innards as soon as he starts to wonder how much time will be left before he loses her.

* * *

><p><strong>viii.<strong>

Thick droplets of blood and morning dew cling in the fur of her obsidian leather jacket and she brushes her hand over the material to swish them away when suddenly Tom swirls her around and presses his lips against her mouth, sinks his teeth into the thin layer of her bottom lip until a biting copper taste lingers on her tongue. Her hands entwine behind his neck and she feels how his arms lift her from the ground, press her back against the solid bark of an old fir tree in the middle of Albanian woods. He rips her scarf off her neck to attack the rosy flesh with the same fierceness as he did to her mouth and she closes her eyes, forgets about the body to their feet.

Nearby, a deer rustles the shrubs.

* * *

><p><strong>ix.<strong>

Sometimes they can travel and go on for weeks without a single corpse that stains their ways and mostly they keep below the radar in one of Tom's houses - London, Paris, St. Moritz, Rome, Barcelona.

He keeps a library in each of them with tons of encyclopaedia and old leather tomes, bound in hunter green or tuscan red, single copies or first publications of world literature books - all of them beyond price.

She wonders how many centuries he needed to gather his collections but she never asks.

_(she never dares)_

* * *

><p><strong>x.<strong>

They know each other's darkest moments and somehow this connects them, redeems them the same way two negatives make a positive. But when Tom offers his palm stained with the juice of mellow pomegranate seeds that soak his skin until it's burgundy and amaranth, she merely licks the sap away, merely cleans his hands.

The seeds still rest heavy in his open palm.

* * *

><p><strong>xi.<strong>

They say all things end and the moment a bullet rips through Hermione's shoulder she can see bright stars of different kinds of colours, a kaleidoscope of the galaxy while the pain flares like cracking flames through her bones, catches the breath in her lungs.

She staggers and falls in the wet foliage of Kansas' woods and when Tom shouts, his voice sounds far away, distorted from the distance between them. There's a second gunshot but she can't see anything besides the blood that sprouts out of her shoulder, soaks her shirt and coat until the fabric clings to the wound.

Hands bury in the mass of wild locks and Tom's face is right before her eyes, screaming, twisted in a horrific white mask and the frost creeps up her legs, the wet and the ground drags her deeper, farer -

* * *

><p><strong>xii.<strong>

"Hermione", the tone in Tom's voice sounds painful, hesitant, almost as if he's not sure that she'd hear him but she does, blinks and tries to sit up. The pain flares like needles through her upper body again and he pushes her back, eyes blown and yellowish from the strange living room light that refracts in them, "You need to rest." Her head feels heavy when she nods and a second later she drifts off to a restless sleep again.

_(she ignores the bitter taste of Tom's blood that lingers in the back of her mouth)_

* * *

><p><strong>xiii.<strong>

The next night she eats the pomegranate seeds right off his palm, shapes her lips around the seeds and bites on the succulent drop until the taste fills her mouth like a heavy blanket, paralyses her tongue. He watches in awe when the red liquid drops down her chin and he brushes it back with his thumb, observes the way she swallows every single bead.

She's his.

He's hers.

They're one.

* * *

><p><strong>xiv.<strong>

They're driving along a deserted highway while fields and trees rush past them and the sun reflects whitish on Tom's aviator sunglasses. His left arm rests casually on his lowered window and the airflow whirls through Hermione's thick hazelnut locks when it rushes over their ruby vermilion BMW Z4 Roadster and Tom asks playfully, almost mischievous, "Where do you want to go?"

A black wooden globe rests in her filigree fingers, an object from Tom's travels that shows all the continents drawn with golden lines and she traces the countries with her index, shapes the words around her lips, dwells on them, considers.

Her eyes are on fire, bright and caramel with freckles of sun-kissed bronze, the juice of pomegranate coloured lips, carmine and crimson and when she answers her voice is clear as a bell, "Everywhere."


End file.
